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Here we have our old friend, Justin Duffie, who has been working with me for just over 4 years now. His progress has been phenomenal, but he has developed a serious issue with striking the ball off of the fairway. Looking at his swing from face on you might not figure that would be a problem since he has learned to move his hands into an excellent approach position, but from down the line I noticed right away that his right arm was not straightening at all through impact. I brought up the subject of throwing and commented that you couldn’t throw without releasing the ball, and Justin mentioned that he was trying to “hold” the angle between the right wrist and the club as long as he could. I told him that the angle was formed and kept by “dragging” the club, and that he couldn’t expect to hold the angle forever because you can’t throw if don’t let go of the ball. All of this made sense when you consider his history, because his old swing (I show it at the beginning of video) would release way early, and it took forever to improve this. Not surprisingly for a good athlete like Justin that he would take this idea past where he should and overdo it, so when he freed it up and let his right arm straighten and his wrist release the difference was huge. The point here is that words and concepts mean a lot, and as an instructor I have to figure out if the student is fully aware of what needs to happen. Justin had made great strides in achieving a later release and was primed to put the club on the ball for a solid, consistent strike. However, thinking that he was supposed to keep on holding the angles in the wrists he was depriving himself of a free, athletic release. His technique work had allowed him to do that, but the implementation was not automatic. Usually the hands are the last thing to learn because they are the mechanism that makes all the other mistakes palatable.
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